Workshop on the Division of Labor between Morphology and Phonology & Fourth Network Meeting January 16-17 2009, Meertens Instituut Amsterdam Linear Disorder in Bantu Reduplication Laura J. Downing, ZAS, Berlin 1 Introduction Many Bantu languages have a process of (partial) verb stem reduplication, with the meaning of doing the action of the verb here and there or from time to time. • A common position for the reduplicative morpheme (RED, underlined) to occur is immediately preceding the morphological stem, as shown in (1a) and (2a). • As shown in (1b) and (2b), in some languages RED is misaligned with vowel-initial stems, either exfixed, (1b), or infixed (2b): (1) Hehe (Odden & Odden 1985) (a) C-initial stems kú-ceénga kú-ceenga-ceénga ‘to build’ kú-teléka kú-teleka-teléka ‘to cook for’ (b) V-initial stems – exfixing kw-íimbíla kwíimbila-kw-iimbíla ‘to sing’ kw-áaka kwáaka-kw-aáka ‘to burn’ (2) Xhosa (Cassimjee 1998) (a) C-initial stems ukú-phátha ukú-phathá-phatha ‘to touch’ ukú-sebénza ukú-sebe-sebénza ‘to work’ (b) V-initial stems – infixing ukw-álátha ukw-á-lathá-latha ‘to point at’ uk-óphúla uk-ó-phulá-phula ‘to break’ Indeed, as shown in (3), • one can find both infixation and exfixation, as well as onset epenthesis, in the same language with vowel-initial stems, o depending on the length of the stem and the nature of the prefixes to the stem: (3) Natal Zulu (Downing elicitation notes) (a) V-initial – exfixing s=ô:se sosa-s-ô:se ‘roast it!’ (b) V-initial – infixing u-ya-s=ósela u-ya-s=o-selá-sela ‘you are roasting for us’ (c) V-initial – Onset epenthesis úk=ó:sa úk=ósá- y o:sa ‘to roast’ Since RED is moving away from its usual pre-Stem position only with vowel-initial Stems, it is clear that prosodic well-formedness motivates the linear disorder of RED: • infixation, exfixation (and epenthesis) are different strategies to avoid an O NSET violation across the RED-Stem boundary.
Bantu verbal reduplication provides, then, a fertile testing ground for two recent approaches within the OT framework to prosodic morpheme ordering critiqued in Yu (2007): • In the phonological or morphological readjustment approach – or P >> M approach (McCarthy & Prince 1993, 1995, Ł ubowicz, in press; Horwood 2002, 2008), o the infixing position of RED is accounted for by proposing it is prefixed to the morphological stem, and forced inside vowel-initial stems to satisfy O NSET . • In the Prosodic Subcategorization approach (Downing 1998a, b, 1999; McCarthy & Prince 1986; Inkelas & Zoll 2005; Yu 2007), o the infixing position of RED is accounted for by proposing that it is prefixed to a (morpho-) prosodic constituent, the Prosodic Stem, which must begin with an Onset. I will argue in this talk that the Prosodic Subcategorization approach provides a better account for the range of misalignments one finds between RED and vowel-initial morphological stems in Bantu languages than the readjustment approach: • In section 2, I present more data, illustrating the morpho-prosodic misalignment patterns one finds in reduplicating vowel-initial verb stems; • In section 3, I develop a Prosodic Subcategorization analysis and show how it defines a factorial typology that accounts for the range of attested misalignments; • In section 4, I discuss how the phonological/morphological readjustment approach would handle the data, and show why it would fail to provide a satisfactory account. 2 Patterns of disorder in Bantu verb stem reduplication Canonical order for RED (in most Bantu languages) is immediately before the Verb stem. As work like Downing (2000, 2003, 2006), Hyman, Inkelas & Sibanda (1999), Inkelas & Zoll (1999, 2000) and Myers & Carleton (1996) show, • RED is a verb stem, forming a compound stem with the Base verb stem: Compound structure for reduplicated Bantu verb stems (Downing 2003) 1 (4) Verb Word 5 INFL MacroStem 5 (O BJ ) [Compound Stem] Stem1 5 ([RED Stem] Stem2 ) [Base Stem] Stem3 Why is RED a stem, not an affix? • Minimal size is bisyllabic, like stems, not monosyllabic, like affixes; • Fixed final /a/ in RED is default inflectional final vowel for verb stems; • Patterns of tone in reduplicative complex best accounted for if complex is a compound. RED is immediately adjacent to the Base morphological Stem if the Stem is C-initial in all the Bantu languages I know of. 1 The RED is shown as preceding the Base here. In languages like Chichewa where RED is analyzed as following the Base, the reduplicative compound would have the structure shown in (4) with the relative positions of the RED and Base reversed. 2
However, if the Stem is V-initial, • then a simple disyllabic or full copy RED adjacent to the Base morphological Stem would violate O NSET , o a constraint on word-medial syllables that is found in many Bantu languages: (5) Pre-morphological V-initial Stem: RED violates O NSET (a) V-initial stems – NON-exfixing *KiHehe kw-íimbíla *kw-íimbila-iimbíla ‘to sing’ kw-áaka *kw-áaka-aáka ‘to burn’ (b) V-initial stems – NON-infixing *IsiXhosa ukw-álátha *ukw-ala-alatha ‘to point at’ uk-óphúla *uk-ophu-ophula ‘to break’ We find a variety of strategies cross-Bantu to avoid an O NSET violation across the RED-Stem boundary: • Epenthesis • Infixation • Exfixation Epenthesis is illustrated with the Kikerewe data below; note the epenthetic segment is not obligatorily copied : (6) Kikerewe verb reduplication (Odden 1996, 130-131) (a) C-initial stems (full copy) ku-lima ku-lima-lima ‘to cultivate’ ku-biba ku-bibá-biba ‘to plant’ ku-káláanga ku-káláanga-kalaanga ‘to fry’ (b) V-initial stems - epenthesis in the Base stem kw-ááta kw-ááta- y ata ‘to cut’ tw-aangílé tw-aangile- y aangílé ‘we disagreed’ tw-ééndá tw-eenda- y ééndá ‘we like’ Exfixation and infixation were illustrated in (1b) and (2b), above, respectively. A first desiderata of an OT analysis of RED infixation, then, is that it must define a factorial typology, • showing that epenthesis, infixation and exfixation are alternative repair strategies in the V-initial context, because they are derivable by simple constraint re-ranking. • NOTE: this is not just a Bantu-centric problem. As Downing (1998b) and Inkelas & Zoll (2005) show, different dialects of Chumash also have different repair strategies – epenthesis vs. exfixation – in the same vowel-initial stem context, for RED. 3
The infixation pattern is subject to a further condition in languages like IsiXhosa, Swati, Ndebele, Zulu (all Nguni Bantu) as well as in KiNande (Mutaka & Hyman 1990), namely, • infixation is blocked in VCV stems. • THAT IS, infixation is subject a minimality constraint: the residue Stem following the infixed RED must be at least bisyllabic. o NOTE, this is the usual minimality constraint on Bantu Stems. As noted for Zulu, whether exfixation or epenthesis is chosen as the alternative strategy for VCV stems depends on the nature of any prefix to the Stem: (7) Natal Zulu (Downing elicitation notes) (a) V-initial – infixing (or epenthesis) with VCVCV or longer u-ya=s-ósela u-ya=s-o-selá-sela ‘you are roasting for us’ úkw=ábisa úkw=á-bísá=bisa ‘to help share out’ OR úkw=ábá- y ábisa (b) V-initial – VCV stem, exfixing possible with Object prefix s=ôse sosa-s-ôse ‘roast it!’ si-ya=z-ába si-ya=zabá-z-aba ‘we are sharing them’ (c) V-initial – VCV stem, epenthesis if prefix is outside the macro-stem úk=ó:sa úk=ósá- y osa ‘to roast’ úkw=ába úkw=abá- y aba ‘to distribute; share out’ A similar set of patterns – with similar restrictions on exfixation vs. epenthesis – is found in closely related Ndebele (Sibanda 2004: 310ff). In Kinande, the alternative to infixation found in longer V-initial stems (8c), is overcopy and coalescence in VCV stems (8d): (8) Kinande verbal reduplication (Mutaka & Hyman 1990; Mutaka 1994; eri- is the infinitive prefix; the reduplicant is underlined) Stem Reduplicated Form Gloss (a) Consonant-initial eri=huma eri=huma-huma to beat eri=humira eri=huma-humira to beat for eri=humirana eri=huma-humirana to beat for each other (b) Monosyllabic eri=swa eri=swa.swa-swa to grind erí=ta erí=ta.ta.-ta to bury (c) Vowel-initial, infixing ery=esera ery=e-sera-sera to play for ery=óhera ery=ó-hera-hera to pick for (d) Vowel-initial, prefixing ery=esa ery=e.se.s-e.sa to play ery=ôha ery=ó.ho.h-o.ha to pick A second desiderata of an OT analysis of RED infixation for these Bantu languages, then, is that it must also account for • the effect of Base minimality: that is, the fact that epenthesis and exfixation are alternative repair strategies to infixation in VCV stems, under the same constraint ranking that optimizes infixation with longer V-initial stem. 4
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